How To Face Down Time

I grew up a few doors away from a girl who looked like Grace Kelly. When she was 20, she sat for a formal portrait and I can still see the strapless gown she wore for it: how the light played on those bare shoulders; how the dress billowed at her hips. That June she married and moved away. The next time I saw her she had on a hat and a high-necked blouse, and her whole torso was  encased in the tight rubber hug of a corset. She looked 50. I was 12 at the time, and I have to say: it scared me to death.Expectations for women may be subtler today, but for sure they’re still out there.Take hair colo. Women are simply expected to color their hair at a certain point. Now I always had black hair. When some grey began appearing, I thought, Fine. “But you’ll look .... old!” said the hairdressers, mournful as morticians. So then for a while I had hair the color of somebody’s liver; the color of cow-tongue even. And I hated it.I mean you care about you appearance; you want to fit in - but not that much, you know? I think of what Secretary of State Albright said once in an interview. Sometimes she dresses up, sure. “But when I work, I really work: I rub my eyes and my makeup comes off and I stick pencils in my hair.” Bravo, Madeleine! I thought, reading that“Stay attractive!” is the message the world sends women generally. Attractive and slim if at all possible. Buy great scarves if you can’t stay slim, but please: Go easy on our eyes.I understand these impulses. I want to look nice too. I don’t want to be rendered invisible, which is what this youth-centered culture does to the 'older'.At my last college reunion, I met a woman who got a masters degree a few years ago and went to work teaching women in prison. Once, she told us, somebody unpleasantly asked one of the incarcerees what exactly they were doing in this course. ’’Right now we’re reading Maya Angelou,” said the inmate with quiet dignity.My new friend beamed proudly as she told me this. Oh and did I mention? She herself is 77 and wears her hair in a crewcut tinted a deep burgundy.Maybe it was she who helped fuel the rebellion I feel building lately inside me.I’ve always hated slips. I’ve always hated pocketbooks. That hot day just past   I was doing without both, wearing just a sundress and the cellphone I rely to keep in touch with my young people and my editors. I had it hooked tucked into my bra  as I chatted with the proprietor of a shop I go to every day.It buzzed, causing me to  glance down at the little square bulge it made under the cloth. “Does this look like a pacemaker? “ I asked, suddenly wondering.“Yup” said my friend the merchant.I undid a quick button and hooked it on the hip-band of my undies.“Now it looks like a colostomy bag,” he said dryly.Pacemakers. Colostomy bags: the language of mortality but what are you gonna do? We’re all bound to age,  sure enough. I guess all I’m saying is I'd like to do it my way.

The Love that Saves Us

"Visit the imprisoned," said Jesus. Jose  was too far away to visit and a stranger at that but how could I not write him back each time he wrote me? Here's the story:One day when we were young women, my sister and I stood with our mom in her little bedroom, poised to go through a whole lost continent of items she kept in a small wooden chest her grandfather had brought with him as a dark-eyed lad of 18 on his journey here from Ireland.Then, the chest was filled with all his worldly goods. Now it held our mother's special family documents, including some photographs of her only love, the father my sister and I never knew.The day before, we had pulled out the pictures of him, speaking in soft voices of poor Hap Sheehy and his difficulties with alcohol and his inability to save even himself – not even for the love of a wife and two babies. Now though, Mom had her hand into a different section of the chest, from which she drew out a photo of her late father’s brothers and sisters, like him, the children of the dark-eyed Irish lad, all born in the time of our great Civil War.In this picture though they were seven decades on in life, squinting against the sun and standing awkwardly, like children, their work-gnarled hands clasped in front of them.She named them for us: Here were Bridget and Margaret, Eugene and Dennis, Annie and Katherine.When she got to this Katherine, she paused.“This is Aunt Kate,” she said, shaking her head in a kind of wonderment. “How she loved and delighted in her children! How they loved and delighted in her!”The way she said these words struck me so that I have never forgotten them. They come back to me now not just because of Mothers Day just past, but because of a letter I recently came upon written to me four years ago by an incarcerated man who used to see my column in The Connecticut Post.He began by wishing me a ‘Happy Mothers Day, belated’ and went on to explain why I hadn’t heard from him in a while:

I’m back in prison for another six months.  I had goals in the past but I abandoned them. I became despondent over my inability to get a job.I guess I’m holding up pretty well though. Sure, some days I feel sad and lonely. I really wanted to find work and some money but I am reading about the great poet Alexander Pushkin. He wrote of passion and regret. He gave Russians a romantic image of themselves.I have learned along the way that we addicts are not less fearful than other human beings, we are more fearful. Our pain is not milder, it is more severe. I have learned that I cannot not drink and drug my way toward self-esteem anymore than I can buy happiness in toxic relationships.This time around I will believe more in myself and try to make the world a less frightening place.I know I’m a creative person, but I got tripped up along the way, allowing other people’s bad habits rub off on me.I will start from the bottom up and hopefully take pleasure and pride in my achievements and allow myself to experience satisfaction.I would love to hear from you when you can take the time. I enclose again my name and prison number. Take care and God bless.With great respect, Jose."

I offer these two stories on this May morning because they help me remember how much we all need human love - every day - to blossom and to make a frightening world less frightening.

Funny Blog, This One!

This is my blogger friend Brian's offering for today. He's alone this weekend in case anyone wants to run over there and check on him ha ha. Oh, and as is the case every day, the pictures he digs up by way of illustration make things even funnier. Go here to see the site and start your day with a chuckle.He calls this one  Beyond the Horizon

 Z and I just celebrated our 34^th wedding anniversary, last weekend.

Yeah….

Go figure…right?

Time flies.

It seems like only yesterday that the judge lifted that restraining order.

And like any couple that’s been legally entangled for more than 3 decades—illegally for nearly another before that—it’s only natural to want to stretch your legs and look for new adventures beyond the horizon, just to see whatever else is lurking out there.

At least that’s what Z told me.

And who am I to argue.

No one that’s who!

Again…at least that’s what Z told me.

She was kidding of course.

Of course….

But she did ask me to drive her to the airport yesterday.

She’s making her yearly pilgrimage to Chicago to visit relatives.

Hers, I believe.

Which, once again, leaves me on my own for a few days to ponder the big picture.

To be honest, I’m not even sure where this huge picture that suddenly appeared in the living room came from.

Z says she didn’t buy it.

I know I didn’t buy it.

But there it is…this big picture, left behind for me to ponder.

As if I didn’t have enough pondering to keep me busy.

Like what’s the best way to make sure I don’t throw the wet laundry in the oven again this year.

Or forget to close the refrigerator door.

Actually that’s an unfair characterization…I didn't really forget to close the refrigerator door.

I did it on purpose.

I just thought it would save on snack preparation time, between innings of the ball game.

And it did.

Despite the fact that everything had a funny taste to it.

And the neighbor’s dog got in through the side door—which I actually did forget to close—and ate all the cold cuts, plus, what

I believe was leftover rigatoni.

But hey, live and learn…right/?

And what better time to navigate the learning curve other than when you've got a few days to yourself to experiment.

Anyway, like I said, I’m fending for myself the next few days.

And when you've been living with the same person—minus the 90s—for over 30 years, there’s a bit of an adjustment.

But not all of it is bad.

For one, I don’t need to shower everyday…why would I?

Or shave...ZZ top, bottom and sideways will have nothing on me.I don’t even need to change my clothes…who’s gonna know?

Okay, the pizza delivery guy, but is he really gonna risk losing that extra buck I throw him at Christmas.

I don’t think so….

I’m also thinking of taking my Jell-O sculpting to the next level.

I don’t want to give too much away...but think big, like in Big Top big.

And of course this gives me the opportunity to get back into my alternate treadmill redesigns.

So I have enough to keep me busy….at least through Saturday.

Sunday, I might look into lawn coloring…not sure.

And Z’s closet looks like it could use some straightening…maybe even some thinning.

That would be a nice surprise wouldn't it?

I can’t wait to see the look on her face when she sees all that extra space….

Okay…gotta go.

The goldfish delivery guy is here.

Picking Up the Pieces

Any big effort takes its toll and we sure made a big effort for the dinner we gave the other night, even if it was of the potluck kind. It was enough of an effort so that at 1am Wednesday morning I woke and thought, "My life is out of control! I can't do all this anymore! "

Then I fell back to sleep. not to wake again until woke 5am when Old Dave turned  on the lights so he could read his Robert Jordan novel.

"Hey!" I said. "It's still night!"

"No it isn't," he said. "Look outside."

I looked outside and he was sort of right: the birds were zooming around like madmen and the sky was coral.

"Yeah but come on! Barely 5am and you put the light on? Go to the Insomnia Room!"

That's what we call the room across the hall that we use for company.

"You go to the insomnia room," he said mildly.

"I'm in the sleeping-room, where people sleep! You're the one trying to do the outside-the-box thing."

Then we both fell back asleep and next thing we knew it was 7:35.

I haven't slept until 7:45 since maybe Fifth Grade. When I opened my eyes and leaped from the bed, I  strapped on my anxiety without even asking myself if I needed it, staggered to the coffee maker, ran the water for my bath and didn't come truly awake til I stepped into it.

From the tub I can see a slice of sky, which by then was the color of Heaven itself, and perceived that  maybe, just maybe, just for today I could, if I were brave enough,  let Time float me on her gently lapping waves.

And so I did.. The sky stayed that heavenly blue until almost noon, so after my 10:00 appointment I stopped at my favorite pond here and just looked at the water.

It calmed me so much I just had to take this picture. Is there another month like the month of May, even with these blizzards of pollen filling our nasal passages and coating every surface? I don't think so, no. May , with a coltish wind upon the water. Ah, May....

Room Ready, Food Ready, Let's Do This

Well I finally got the books all back into the bookcase, as you can see.And I lifted that all-seeing eye of a TV down off its table and hid it in behind.Also moved the rugs back in.CIrcled the furniture around the perimeter of the room so we can all see one another as is the custom when this group reads aloud a play by Shakespeare, (though tonight we're just taking a close look at a scene with Prince Hal from Henry IV Part 1.)We're only focusing on the one scene partly because we also have to vote on some changes in the bylaws of this near-150-year old group known as the Old Cambridge Shakespeare Association; but mostly we make the formal part of this last-meeting-of-the-season short so we can enjoy a 'collation', the lovely old word for eats.We have shifted to more of a potluck menu in these last few years but because of the way I tend to do things, I have arranged to have enough food for all 28 people just in case..We have Chicken Breast Supremo, 48 little cranberry-and-herb stuffed pincushiony  creations with cream sauce on top. (I ordered these and will pick them up later). Also a platter of Smoked Salmon with Cream Cheese and Capers (ditto). Alsoa vast vat of Beef Provencale that I spent the whole weekend cooking.Also bread.And David, who is like me in these ways, bought a case of wine.Because the custom really is not to eat until we have dug into the meat of Shakespeare's words, we will hold off on the main meal until 7:30 or so, but since I also can’t stand to think of anyone hungry I believe I'll ladle the beef dish into a couple dozen adorably mini 'tureens'  and offer them right away as an amuse-bouche. That's a thing you get in your upscale restaurants, the amuse-bouche.   They don't charge you for it. It's just a free little something at the start of the meal that the chef presumably had a bit of fun putting together that day in the kitchen.I certainly had a bit of fun arranging this event. (I think picking and arranging the bouquet of lilacs was the best fun. Such fragrance! Such abundance!)And tonight, knowing myself, I will drink half a glass of wine, help myself to whatever potluck dish looks to be begging for attention, laugh, marvel, learn from these amazing co-members and then finally fall into bed and sleep like the dead.And now one of my favorite songs from "As You Like it," to set a nice tone for the day. I had to sing this solo at one night's reading of a play. I was an absolute  wreck about it - until others began joining in, because, great group that this is, they all knew it by heart, words and music and the joy beneath the words.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tsi5cGBstbo]

Cleaning Out the Bookcase

We're having a 25-person dinner here this week so I decided a month ago that I'd better fix the place up, since the living room has remained untouched since 1989. I mean we clean and all, and I guess we've re-covered a sofa or two, but still: there was a real time-capsule in the room and that time-capsule was:This bookcase.For behind the many books, which I have taken out one by one, and dusted and recategorized, I found many a vintage item:

• There was an ornament imprinted "Baby's First Christmas, 1976".
• There was two of the primitive musical instrument known as the recorder, often offered to school kids for their first attempt at music-making. I remember begging my kids to practice on this fiendish stick and then having to stifle a scream as they began doing it. Even today when I picked it up and played "Cotton-Eyed Joe" on it, I feel a jolt of electrical current worming up my spine.
• There was a video on the workings of the lower torso dating from my two year study of Anatomy.
• And finally there was a wee piece of paper that fluttered down as I removed the books. It was clearly written on a typewriter and it appears to date back far further in time than 1989. Its message:  "I wish to borrow this book and will return it in one week."

And here they all are, together.And here is the Pelvis, for your pleasure. Oh and an old timetable, also found...But where are the children who played these recorders? Where is that baby from the Bicentennial? And now that I think of it, reminded by this wee strip of paper, where in tarnation is my copy of Tina Fey's Bossy Pants  that I lent to I'm-not-sure-who 18 months and have not seen since?So much is lost along the way - sigh. Later today, I'll be putting the room back together but for now I think I'll comfort myself with watching my nice video. (Look at the lurid picture on the front! Love it! Half a pelvis is bette than none I always say. ;-))

Happy Birthday Fatty

This in honor of the recent birthday of my youngest, seen here in Fifth Grade, impersonating America's tubbiest President, William Howard Taft.For a while there, we were in danger of some real solemnity in this family; of growing downright grave what with practicing the quieter virtues. We had two children at first, both females, and I can tell you we all floated along on a great river of calm.Even when a third child had come and was, of all things, a boy, we still moved with tranquility, and for a while the baby seemed to do so too - until the day at about 12 months old when he stood up in his crib and began hollering to his stuffed animals. A certain vividness surfaced for us all then; and quiet understatement went down for the third time.This little boy’s grandmother had been a wise-guy and we all loved that about her. She died when this third child was only three so he doesn’t remember her.But I found myself calling my sister not much more than a year after her death. “I know this sounds weird, but I think Mom’s back!" is what I told her. Because this third child was a happy little wise-guy himself, and brought to the once-peaceful supper table of family life a level of hilarity we never would have predicted.He fancied toilet plungers as a First Grader, and when, at the hardware store, he saw a display of very small ones, he cried out with joy and began promptly applying them, with great sucking sounds, to his ears, mouth, and bare tummy. He asked for half a dozen for his birthday.He told us in Fourth Grade that the teacher said they would need string for that night’s homework.“What if we have no string?” he asked her. “Use dental floss,” she replied, setting herself up for it. “I can’t,” he answered with mock-sadness. “My family doesn’t believe in oral hygiene.”We dreaded the next parent-teacher conference.Around this same time, he got a new jacket imprinted, as these jackets often are, with our town’s name. The nice man helping us pointed out that with so many jackets alike, it was a good idea to have his name stitched on the sleeve.“OK!” he agreed readily  “Only have it say ‘Fatty,' he added, and three grownups could not talk him out of it.At this point he was four foot eight inches tall and weighed 72 pounds. Every spring at his yearly checkup, the doctor would say, “Due for a growth spurt soon!' And every year he would look ironically over at me.But while we awaited this famous growth spurt, we had some dandy fun.I recall the time he pulled some hair our of my hairbrush, glued it to his bare chest, sauntered into the living room and said in a theatrically deepened voice, “Dad, I’d like to use the car tonight.”When he finally turned 11^th, I remember we got him everything but more toilet plungers – and also a cake reading “Happy Birthday, Fatty.”Of course he insisted on being the one to light its million candles; then rushed into the darkened next room and made us march in with it, singing.“What did you wish?” one of his sisters asked after he blew out the candles.He wouldn’t say - some things are serious, after all - but I knew what I wished: that night. I wished we could rewind the eleven years and run them clear through again.And the 11 years that followed them too. Ah, those years too.

I Hang Upside Down

So what do people say when you ask what makes them feel safe? I asked that question here Tuesday and the answers were great:A person named Joan spoke of walking briskly by the seawall on a foggy morning and hearing the foghorn. Also the sound of rain beating on the windows at night. Times like these she says she feels “safe and at one with nature.”She wrote this the second time she posted a comment about that post.The first time she spoke of morning coffee and gazing at the flowers in the garden window. That and brushing her dog Angel, and "that ridiculous fluff of a tail.” (I love that last part.)Another person named Michael called up the memory of seeing Isaac Asimov being interviewed long ago on The Tonight Show. To Carson’s question about his personal vision of the future, Asimov replied: “I see the immediate future, the short term, as very dark indeed. But long term, I think the future of humanity is glorious. Unimaginably glorious. Provided we can survive the next century or so.” Consequently, Michael goes on,  he now feels he doesn’t have to contend with the same uncertainty that the madness around us stirs up. ‘It’s not that I don’t feel fear or sadness or anger, just that I don’t have that underlying 'what the Hell is happening?’ anxiety to compound it.” What a gift to have such faith! (You can see more of Michael’ s comment on this page.)And a  third person named Morgan, writing her reply in an email to me, spoke about the second go-round of a course on Mindfulness that she is taking. She said that for her the absence of anxiety was enough to make her feel safe.I sure get that. When I first wake up in the morning anxiety floods all through my body, I think because I began forming a habit of overwork the summer I was 14  I have still not been entirely able to put down,  even all these years later.But lately I have begun the practice of lying on my back with my head hanging off the edge of my bed, as per my chiropractor's orders. In this wonderful batlike pose I can look out the window at what the rising sun is doing to the trees across the street. I can see the clouds. I can watch the planes coming in to  land at Logan Airport eight miles to the east. And best of all, I can see the birds.These birds rise and swoop, rise and swoop and they lift anxiety from me every time I see them do it. 'It's a new day,' I tell myself then, 'and I'm waking in a world whose sun rose with no help from me at all.'Then I begin to feel calm. Calm and safe too, in a world not of my making.I often wish I had a dog with a big fluffy tail like the sweet drooly Golden we had as children but until I can get one, or walk again along a beach, or hear rain on a roof, while I await that unimaginably glorious future Mr. Asimov saw so clearly, this will have been enough. This will have been more than enough.

Who Saves Us

I said I would post a picture of the two-year-old grandson who told me, "Don't worry! I've got you!" as I was carrying him down a set of icy stone steps. (See Monday's post here.)That remark held so much within it, how could I fail to remember it always?It's not that a little child like that was trying to look out for me, this giant adult who was, after all, carrying him bodily through space.It's more the metaphor of it; the idea, subtly suggested, that although we can never save ourselves from harm or elude fates as grim as the ones that have befallen or could have befallen people in Minnesota, Cleveland and Boston, we CAN save others. We can.Brave people.Timid people.Strangers and bystanders.All of us. And we do it all the time.But how did this little child know that? I think it must have been the wisdom of God himself shining through him.Maybe what you need is this soft focus you see in little David here, in this picture take two years after our halting journey down those icy steps. It's the softer focus that lets us see not just the things that are right before us, but the things a little farther off, and hidden almost from our sight.moving and alive at the edge of our vison.

What Makes YOU Feel Safe?

All this talk in the media about feeling safe enough -  even my own talk here yesterday on the Huffington Post - has me wondering: what do most of us do to feel safe in a day-today way?

I don't mean what do we overtly do, like put on a hazmat suit or never cross a bridge. I mean what we do to feel safe inside, the way we felt when we were little kids in overalls sitting on the floor in front of Captain Kangaroo, or watching dust motes circle lazily in the empty dining room when the sun painted the whole room gold?

If I were still a high school English teacher and you were my students, I'd make you all sit on the floor in a circle and have you make a quick list right now, of three things that make you feel safe in this cozy old way.

What would you put on it? I'll mull this over today, and see what I myself can come up with by morning.

Class dismissed!

I've Got You

It now seems a world away from this blooming time, that winter's day when I was trying to carry my three-year-old grandson down the set of stone steps that lead from our driveway. This is a picture I took that morning from our kitchen window.“We just need to be a little careful here,” I said to him, knowing well that to descend any steps is to execute many carefully calibrated movements that amount to a controlled fall.And so I hesitated at the top.“Are you OK, TT?” the little boy asked. He calls me TT“Oh yes!” I said as cheerily as I could. “I just want to good and careful!'He gathered the fabric of my jacket into his small fist then and uttered a sentence I will never forget.“It’s OK,” he said in his little-boy lisp. “I am holding you.”And that is one story.Another story unfolded during a flight I recently took on a plane holding just 67 people, as I heard the flight attendant report to the people at the gate.Sixty- seven souls, as they used to say once.A near-full plane with only 67 passengers is a small plane by most standards, its cabin so cozy I could hear everything that that man five rows in front of me was saying to this flight attendant.“So this is First Class!” he began, and that got my attention because it’s just what I was thinking: I too was in First Class for the first time, because the airline put me here for no extra money.I felt like a sort of impostor, I’ll admit. I felt a little uncomfortable.Maybe the man felt uncomfortable too, I thought, because his voice had a strange constricted quality, which the flight attendant had to lean in close to hear.“What about this wind shear you’re always hearing about?” I heard him ask, and you don’t have to say that phrase twice to get my attention, wind shear being that sudden downdraft of air that can pull a plane right out of the sky; that did pull a plane out of the sky recently, causing it to belly-flop into the sea while attempting to land at an airfield in Bali.Time was, I saw commercial flight as a tame and snoozy thing compared to the space flights we were all reading about back then.It was, in my mind, like a ride on a Ferris wheel, a sort of sublime lifting-up where you got the chance to sit back and view the whole park.I don’t feel that way about air travel now – and, clearly, this man didn’t either.“Never mind wind shear, what about gravity?” I heard him say in an even tighter voice. “How can planes NOT get sucked down out of the sky every day?”It was then that I realized: This was the man’s very first airplane flight –which is why the flight attendant had put him up front near her.She had put him there to look after him.“It’s OK,” she intoned softly. “It’s ohhh-kay” she repeated, her hand on his shoulder.“I’ve got you,” she said, and the phrase took me right back to that winter day and the fear I had at the top of those icy steps, with my little grandchild in my arms.She was holding him, just as that child felt that he was holding me, even as I knew that I was holding him.We are all holding one another in this life. We are all keeping each other safe; and we do have the power to do that, as we are taught again and again in this life.

A Warning to Us All

This author the blog Citizens of Fashion began subscribing to my  blog here when she read a recent post of mine on the  many discontents we women seem to have concerning   the way we look.I reposted it here just now. I can tell you it well worth the read.

Valeria Levitin,The World's Thinnest Woman Campaigns Against Anorexia

Very much worth reading in the light of what young women especially so to themselves in 'fashion's name..

First, Do No Harm

Last Monday I made some remarks about myself as I looked in the mirror, especially about the way the buttons were straining on the flannel shirt I was wearing, one of my son’s old Extra Smalls. I mentioned this last to my husband, who was just passing through the room at the time. "Get a breast reduction!" he joked, which seemed weird, since he sees me every day looking like Homer Simpson in his underpants; I figured he should know that the problems was further down, at my stomach and hips.

Posting all this prompted a blogger I had never heard from to connect with me. She is committed to discussing anorexia and the damage anorexia does to young women.

I hadn’t read more than one paragraph on her site before I was wincing over my silly and, let me admit, somewhat mendacious whine. Yes my upper arms sport swags on their undersides nowadays – I call them 'window treatments' – but the fact is I’m 5-foot-6 inches tall and I weight 128 pounds so really I’m not anybody’s idea of fat.

I know that.

And isn’t talking as if I were, even for the sake of getting a laugh, could be downright damaging to the world-view of younger women, who are already being bombarded by message about what the one right body size is. Is damaging.

Besides writing about fashion this woman makes it her mission to warn young woman away from blogs that encourage them to essentially starve themselves.

What I know for sure is how faintly aghast I feel every year at this time, when I watch the parade of young women in my town promenade to the buses that will take them to their proms. They are gorgeous in their youthful beauty, every one of them, as are their prom gowns, strapless or off the shoulder or cut away at the midriff to show a smooth wedge of flesh.

But the thin ones are just tooth inn… I practiced massage for six years and studied a lot of Anatomy. I know what a scapula looks like so well I could draw the bony 3-D puzzle of that area wearing a blindfold. I have worked on my share of them. Ye I have never see the shape and edges of female scapulas so luridly protruding as on Prom Night these last few years.

Here are the bones I refer to as the person faces away, back to the 'camera'

You can obviously feel these bones when you work on a person in massage.  You understand their placement and function. But unless you’re working on a cadaver you don’t see them in such a three-dimensional fashion, all notched and knobby.

I can say more about this tomorrow and point us to the blogger’s posts but for now let’s just tale a step back and think about these young women walking around with so little to protect them. Poor things, so undefended! Poor, poor things, and doubtless hungry too!

The Parts of Your Body You DON'T Like

Why can’t we love our bodies as they are? Here’s a great poem for today, the final day of National Poetry Month – and also as follow-up to yesterday’s silly post about my imperfections:

Summer at the Beach by Louise Gluck

Before we started camp, we went to the beach.Long days, before the sun was dangerous.My sister lay on her stomach, reading mysteries.I sat in the sand, watching the water.You could use the sand to coverparts of your body that you didn't like.I covered my feet, to make my legs longer;the sand climbed over my ankles.I looked down at my body, away from the water.I was what the magazines told me to be:coltish. I was a frozen coltMy sister didn't bother with these adjustments.When I told her to cover her feet, she tried a few times,but she got bored; she didn't have enough willpowerto sustain a deception.I watched the sea; I listened to the other families.Babies everywhere: what went on in their heads?I couldn't imagine myself as a baby;I couldn't picture myself not thinking.I couldn't imagine myself as an adult either.They all had terrible bodies: lax, oily, completelycommitted to being male and female.The days were all the same.When it rained, we stayed home.When the sun shone, we went to the beach with my mother.My sister lay on her stomach, reading her mysteries.I sat with my legs arranged to resemblewhat I saw in my head, what I believed was my true self.Because it was true: when I didn't move I was perfect.

Bring on the Workweek

Took the weekend off. Did no work at all. Acted like a 12-year-old in that I pretty much just listened to my i-Pod, wrote in my diary and gave my feet the critical eye.I also broke precedent and looked in the mirror for a full seven minutes, which made me stand appalled by what has become of me. I have wrinkles galore, a furrow deep enough to plant carrots in and this new weird thing where my spine snakes over to the left, then doubles back on itself and snakes over to the right. Most people don't notice it until I mention it but then they see it all right. When I pointed it out to my friend Ahmad he said in his mild way, "Oh yeah! Your pants are here and your shirt is over here!"Also I'm getting these dark things on my face, like Morgan Freeman has. They're like pigmented freckles only I've never had freckles.Plus my eyes, which were always too close together, seem now to be heading for opposite corners of the room.My teeth look like kernels on the corncob you split open and then toss back in the bin. (WHY WASN'T I MADE TO WEAR BRACES EVER?) Also my bangs are too short - they make me look like Imogene Coca if anyone remembers her.And my eyebrows are disappearing.I was examining the Nike Swoosh of my spine when my man sauntered into the bathroom. I had this flannel shirt on that I found in our son’s high school bedroom.“It’s a men’s small but it’s not quite makin’ it in the buttoning shut department."Get a breast reduction,” he quipped.He was kidding of course. The real problem was about a foot further down, but maybe I should anyway. I mean, it’s too late for braces, right?Maybe I can enter these years like a sort of sprightly un-busty Mary Lou Retton. Hey, it would take my mind off the rest of me. What does a thing like that cost anyway? And why go around looking like this sadsack..... When I could go around looking like this:Well. Such are the thoughts of a person with WAY too much time on her hands. Bring on the workweek! 

Ah, Hotel Rooms!

All my talk of ironing yesterday  has me remembering the many hotels rooms in which I have stayed, wasting that great first hotel hour by ironing.(How many other women find that the first thing they do is put on the hotel TV, heave their suitcase up onto the bed, crack it open like an oyster in its shell and proceed to drag out that in-room ironing board, all folded up and hanging like a bat in the closet? After a really long trip you can find yourself ironing even your bras.)Some hotel rooms have irons free from gummy buildup, irons that actually keep  working without shutting off again after 90 seconds.Those are the good ones, and they contrast sharply with the room I stayed in on a trip just last month with tiny aphids swarming around in the john.Then there was the other room I took during that same trip whose microwave was knocked silly by the time change we had at 1am on that second Saturday in March. I don’t know how a microwave could know about the time change but this one seemed to. The morning before we ‘sprang forward’ it was just fine. The morning after it was blinking Clock! Clock! Clock ! - then when you tried to set the clock simply showed you what looked like a little snake thing doing a sort of wiggly Egyptian dance.But the worst hotel room of all was the one I stayed at in Manhattan once, with a stream of black silt continually glugging up through the bathtub drain. I could only pray it was silt. Also, the bulbs in its lamps were so dim you couldn’t read your book - the bulbs that weren’t already burned out that is . Ah the memories!The best hotel room was a tall narrow chamber on the banks of Italy’s Lake Como with a wardrobe instead of a closet and a window hung with silky golden curtains.Its bathroom had all those weird European bathroom doodads like one of those steel towel racks that never seem to work. All over Italy I went that fall of '08, staying in hotel rooms with these same heat-up-able towel racks but never did I find even one that actually worked. Maybe I was just being really stupid and they weren’t racks to heat up your towel at all but rather some contrivance utterly unimaginable to us Americans, like the bidet, which you see all over France.But so what?  In this room the best feature wasn’t the bathroom anyway.Nor was it the room’s ‘closet’, an armoire no wider than  a couple of coffins lashed together and then upended.The best part of the room was those golden curtains which I can still close my eyes and see , a whole four-and-a-half years later.Here’s a picture. May we all stay in a room with curtains like these , at least once in our lives! I live off this visual still. It looks almost like a painting doesn't it?

Things Fall Apart

Things go wrong around any house. Even the First Family’s. Even the Queen’s. But you sometimes you have to wonder: Why do they go wrong ALL AT ONCE?The other day, with no notice at all, a steel rod suddenly shot up out of the mattress I share with my spouse, over on his side of the bed. It was like we were in an old prison movie and someone was trying to plant a shiv in his ribs.HE says it’s just a stray end of inner spring that came unsprung and poked its way through the foam.I say there’s more to it.I say our mattresses get mad at us, as do our other household possessions, the way they suddenly malfunction.Take our irons and ironing boards: they get mad at us too. I was pressing some pants the other day when my ironing board suddenly buckled at the knees and collapsed down onto the floor, taking the iron with it –not once but three times in a row.Each time I pulled it back upright, checking to see that the latch was locked in place, and three times it went down – wham! - on the floor, the third time melting a big shiny patch into my cheapo rug with its artificial fibers made from recycled trash bags and soft drink cans.It’s as if all our possessions are in cahoots - because there’s more:Inside the house, a chair arm will, with no warning at all, detach itself from one of the dining room chairs when someone tries to rise from it.Outside the house, lawn chairs will suddenly buckle under people, landing them flat on their keisters.I got to thinking I knew what was going on: Our ‘things’ are jealous of us, because we last so much longer than they do.I mean, aren’t the mattress merchants always telling us our bedding goes bad after a dozen or so years? And look at those irons. Any iron I buy goes stone cold after three seasons, tops. And those lawn chairs with their bendy aluminum legs? Try 12 months.This was my theory anyway and it seemed like a pretty good one...Until last week when the weather suddenly moved in here with us and rain began coursing down the INSIDES of two windowpanes.Could the house itself be jealous, because we’re going to live so much longer?Negative. This house has been here since the 1890s.Hmmmm. There was a fact worth pondering.Come to think of it, the inner springs in my own spinal column have been known to sometimes go ‘sproing’.And my own inner ‘iron’ often fails to heat up.And as for all that collapsing and landing - wham! - on the floor, isn’t that in the future for all of us at some point?Maybe our household goods aren’t jealous of us at all, and certainly not for our length of days.Maybe what they’re really doing with all their wearing out and falling apart actually constitutes a cautionary tale and they’re offering us a lesson.The lesson’s message? Strike now, while your iron is hot. Stand tall today, while your legs have strength to do so.This is me on a typical morning (I've lost some weight lately.)

Life With Young Children

The fact that today is the birthday of my third and youngest child  who was not yet in the world until his sisters were five and seven, has me remembering back to the fun we had in the years raising our kids, and the sense of peace I still feel when I am among them... For In a family, you are known. You don't have to pretend or explain. They take you as they find you - even if they do take frequent joy in mocking youOn certain nights, around the supper table, one of our kids would suddenly say, "OK, let's switch roles. You be Mom, you be Dad," etc.  Then a fast improv would follow.Once, I drew the then-13-year-old; swung my hair over one eye and said, "I need money, need a ride, I need money, I need a ride..."This youngest, the then-five-year-old whose birthday it is today, once acted out his father for us in this game. He puffed out his  tummy, lay down on the floor and began snoring with a newspaper over his face.Our then ten-year-old then 'did' me. "Come to dinner, people!", she shrieked. "Come eat your dinner before I throw it in the yard!"It's instructive to watch yourself thus parodied.And there's never a dull moment, just generally in a family, because in a family, everyone comes home with tales of pain and triumph - and with funny stories too.That then-kindergartner, being new to the world, had the most stories: The story about the little girl in his class who squeezed her eyes shut and clasped her hands as if in prayer every day when she recited the Pledge of Allegiance. Or the tale of the older boy who told him he had his pants on backwards. "I can't understand it," I remember our little guy saying. " I put them on this morning and they were frontwards! Sometimes I put one pair of underpants and find out later I have  two pairs on. One day I put on a pair and looked later and they were gone!""You talk a lot," one of his older sisters observed to him mildly, after ten straight minutes of this monologue."I can't help it," he said earnestly. "School is a strong thing."School sure is a strong thing. And work is a strong thing too. We all go out each day to face strong things.I remember how the morning would come and one alarm after another would go off in this house. The sound of five showers would drum in the bathroom. Coffee would be gulped, cereal smeared and sprinkled around. Then there'd be a mad scramble to find shoes.Now too there are those same scenarios in households the over world.  Folks go out into their day and return for supper, glad to be back home.Back in the years I am thinking of now, when the children were asleep at last, we two tired parents would make the rounds and collecting stray socks. We would kiss their sleeping faces and they smelled so good; like apples, and geraniums, and fresh-baked dough.We knew that one day these children would be gone from us, and dinner would be a  far quieter affair.We were right there for sure.But today, on the birthday of our youngest who is up in his 20s by now,  I'm reminded again of how much their dad and I have loved them all; and how much they have made us smile.

Stand Down

We were all in such a state Friday that when his mum texted me this picture of our five-year-old grandson asleep and 'armed'  I felt a literal stab in my heart. The words accompanying the text: "He turned on his light and fell asleep on the floor with his stick. Protecting the house, he says."Last week had so much woe in it. The moments like the one I first had on seeing message make only a small example. At the same time though there was also joy in our house:My husband came home  after four days away. And our daughter Carrie, the mother of this little boy, came home to her family. (She and my husband David were together on a business trip.)And most iimportantly these two new parents, as much a part of our family as the children we 'made,' were at ast allowed to leave Brigham & Women's Hospital here in Boston where they were held on lockdown on that awful Monday with their newly-arrived babe.Here are some pictures of that joyful homecoming  (Oh! and I should probably  add that 30 minutes after I first got that text about this little boy sleeping with his weapon, his mom texted again to explain that he sleeps with a stick every night in his self-imposed role as 'family protector'. He knew nothing of the events transpiring in Cambridge and Watertown.)Below here are some images:First, the note the brand-new parents wrote to the staff at Brigham & Women's followed by images of them at their house, which was decorated by  two loving friends.Here we see the first of thousands of 'carseat extractions' followed by the actual homecoming:"Papa' seemed like an old hand at this already when Carrie and I went to visit them near week's end.and here finally is 'Aunt' Carrie, holding her new niece for the very first time..

Joy abounding!